WotC Mike Mearls: "D&D Is Uncool Again"

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In Mike Mearls' recent interview with Ben Riggs, he talks about how he feels that Dungeons & Dragons has had its moment, and is now uncool again. Mearls was one of the lead designers of D&D 5E and became the franchise's Creative Director in 2018. He worked at WotC until he was laid off in 2023. He is now EP of roleplaying games at Chaosium, the publisher of Call of Chulhu.

My theory is that when you look back at the OGL, the real impact of it is that it made D&D uncool again. D&D was cool, right? You had Joe Manganiello and people like that openly talking about playing D&D. D&D was something that was interesting, creative, fun, and different. And I think what the OGL did was take that concept—that Wizards and this idea of creativity that is inherent in the D&D brand because it's a roleplaying game, and I think those two things were sundered. And I don’t know if you can ever put them back together.

I think, essentially, it’s like that phrase: The Mandate of Heaven. I think fundamentally what happened was that Wizards has lost the Mandate of Heaven—and I don’t see them even trying to get it back.

What I find fascinating is that it was Charlie Hall who wrote that article. This is the same Charlie Hall who wrote glowing reviews of the 5.5 rulebooks. And then, at the same time, he’s now writing, "This is your chance because D&D seems to be stumbling." How do you square that? How do I go out and say, "Here are the two new Star Wars movies. They’re the best, the most amazing, the greatest Star Wars movies ever made. By the way, Star Wars has never been weaker. Now is the time for other sci-fi properties", like, to me that doesn’t make any sense! To me, it’s a context thing again.

Maybe this is the best Player’s Handbook ever written—but the vibes, the audience, the people playing these games—they don’t seem excited about it. We’re not seeing a groundswell of support and excitement. Where are the third-party products? That’s what I'd ask. Because that's what you’d think, "oh, there’s a gap", I mean remember before the OGL even came up, back when 3.0 launched, White Wolf had a monster book. There were multiple adventures at Gen Con. The license wasn’t even official yet, and there were already adventures showing up in stores. We're not seeing that, what’s ostensibly the new standard going forward? If anything, we’re seeing the opposite—creators are running in the opposite direction. I mean, that’s where I’m going.

And hey—to plug my Patreon—patreon.com/mikemearls (one word). This time last year, when I was looking at my post-Wizards options, I thought, "Well, maybe I could start doing 5E-compatible stuff." And now what I’m finding is…I just don’t want to. Like—it just seems boring. It’s like trying to start a hair metal band in 1992. Like—No, no, no. Everyone’s mopey and we're wearing flannel. It's Seattle and rain. It’s Nirvana now, man. It’s not like Poison. And that’s the vibe I get right now, yeah, Poison was still releasing albums in the ’90s. They were still selling hundreds of thousands or a million copies. But they didn’t have any of the energy. It's moved on. But what’s interesting to me is that roleplaying game culture is still there. And that’s what I find fascinating about gaming in general—especially TTRPGs. I don’t think we’ve ever had a period where TTRPGs were flourishing, and had a lot of energy and excitement around them, and D&D wasn’t on the upswing. Because I do think that’s what’s happening now. We’re in very strange waters where I think D&D is now uncool.
 

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Maybe the peak of popularity of D&D ended but this doesn't mean now it has fallen into oblivion.

D&D is about creating heroes, worlds and stories. If you are new then you don't need to await to buy the comingsoon titles but the best titles of 2014 Ed.

We need other factors to know the level of popularity, for example the sales of toys, books, comics and other merchandising products.

How to explain it? There is a lot of isekai maganimes, but there is some reason because some titles are more popular than others. There is a lot of new videogames but only a little number become enough popular to keep the servers.

D&D is the number one in the industry of TTRPGs but it is a litle fish comparing with the videogames. Lots of publishers try to promote the hobby, following different strategies, but now only Hasbro can pay enough money for "product emplacement" in cinematographic productions. And it is also a little fish comparing with the rest of franchises and IPs. It has got still a great potential, but we need the right steps, and we don't know these totally.
 

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I think the less they talk about the core rulebook shift in the future, the better. If I was in their shoes, I'd focus on 100% new content. If the old stuff works, just let it work. Don't keep bouncing the topic back up into people's attention. If anyone asks, just say it works with any 5e PHB. It's the same game.

I think it's early to be doomsaying when the new revision's third and final book just came out yesterday at certain retailers. I also think it's not a good look for a designer on the 2014 rules to be suggesting that the people who made the 2024 revision should shut up about it and sweep it under the rug instead.
 
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It's ambiguous which means it coukd be taken as deceptive.

They've been doing this for years. I remember 4E launch.
Unless they give out financial data without commentary...there's very little WottC could state that would be 100% unambiguous. That's the nature of language.

Edit: Also what did they deceive their consumers about concerning 4e?
 

Maybe the peak of popularity of D&D ended but this doesn't mean now it has fallen into oblivion.

D&D is about creating heroes, worlds and stories. If you are new then you don't need to await to buy the comingsoon titles but the best titles of 2014 Ed.

We need other factors to know the level of popularity, for example the sales of toys, books, comics and other merchandising products.

How to explain it? There is a lot of isekai maganimes, but there is some reason because some titles are more popular than others. There is a lot of new videogames but only a little number become enough popular to keep the servers.

D&D is the number one in the industry of TTRPGs but it is a litle fish comparing with the videogames. Lots of publishers try to promote the hobby, following different strategies, but now only Hasbro can pay enough money for "product emplacement" in cinematographic productions. And it is also a little fish comparing with the rest of franchises and IPs. It has got still a great potential, but we need the right steps, and we don't know these totally.
There are also quite a few big name ttrpgs on the near horizon that are going in a very different direction from d&d for a change, that's pretty much unheard of. I'm the wider interview he mentioned how d&d lost heaven's blessing∆ and how wotc/Hasbro doesn't seem to show any interest in changing that. There's something to be said for the power of an obvious observation heard by the right ears. Originally I was just going to link to a snippet with only the six words but 5e's hell or high water focus on players first last and always makes the whole clip even more relevant

∆don't remember the exact wording & not going to rewatch it to find that.
 
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Unless they give out financial data without commentary...there's very little WottC could state that would be 100% unambiguous. That's the nature of language.

Edit: Also what did they deceive their consumers about concerning 4e?

They said sonething like most pre-orders ever which people turned into biggest selling ever.
Did pre 3E even have pre orders for example.

It gives the illusion people can Conjure up D&D is selling millions. Usually that's lifetime sales.

If the real numbers are a few hundred thousand (which I suspect) people might think "only 500k that's all"?

They let peoples imaginations fill in the blanks. We do have hard numbers for previous editions. I suspect that's why they don't reveal hard numbers.
 
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The local game stores in Indy was sold out when I went by yesterday for the MM, didnt ask how many it was but still a good sign to me. It’s a ttrpg focused store to boot and order around that customer base, no cards in there.
 


The biggest trouble it has is just the broader business climate/thinking of the modern era where execs can't handle "not growing" at all.

It seems that so much of the thinking leads companies to take huge risks rather than having a stable business.
 



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